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Personal thoughts on the death of John Blanche

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The great former Games Workshop art director has passed. He's been an immense inspiration to me since I first got into warhammer aged around 7 - and I still remember how excited I was to find his (very different, earlier, less chaotic) art in my father's battered old copy of David Day's Tolkein Bestiary.   I tried to imitate his styles in my GCSE art projects, with the merciful support of my teachers; I think as a dyspraxic child who loved drawing but couldn't really be neat, seeing the wild exubrance of his penwork and watercolours might have been one of the main things inspiring me to keep trying.  Strategically cropping some of the more embarrassing bits It'd be some years until I realized just how much control and skill, developed in his fine art schooling, really did go into that work - but by then he'd retired from Games Workshop, producing the Voodoo artbooks as he (if interviews are to be believed) struggled with declining co-ordination, and the relatab...
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Haunting host, updated, comments on balance, and rules for Captain Vangheist of the Shadewraith

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I've now playtested my original Haunting Host list through a couple of games, against Empire and Cathay, plus some graph-paper tests of my own. Conclusions are as follows: At core it's pretty balanced, but predictably it's swingy. In particular, some of the swing is about what opponent you're facing, as some armies have much better options for generating magical attacks than others. See Appendix A, 'armies by ghost-killing capacity' and B, 'making it fair' Banshees and screams are ofc an excellent damage dealer, but aren't game-winning in the absence of big regenerating troop blocks even if you hop a load of them out of haunt in somebody's backline I wanted some special vampiric power equivalents, which have been added as 'spectral manifestations'. Just gives a bit more variety to the character ghosts.  Cairn Wraiths were underperforming badly compared to banshees and hexwraiths, with their low speed and swingy but basically low attack p...
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The Host with the Ghosts: A Warhammer: The Old World Army of Infamy AND rules for Lord Virion the Grim, Mortarch of Plague

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 Played a game of ToW the other day for the first time in probably nine months or so. I brought a VC list almost entirely comprised of Ethereal creatures and then crumbled turn 2 when my general got shot by a magic-ized cannon. Yay :) ( relevant tumblr post ) But I couldn't get over one critical thing: I can't field an entire army of ethereal creatures. This is an injustice. I must correct it. Thanks to R. for help brainstorming the initial idea for this article after surgically murdering me in what still has to be one of the more interesting games I've ever played. Thanks also to the Warhammer Fantasy redditors who pointed out issues (notably u/Fool_of_a_Took). It'll remain a living work up to the first playtests, at which point subsequent revisions will likely appear in a new post. Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts 8th edition. GW never credited their artists well and has only gotten worse at this; if you know who did any specific piece of art, lmk and I'll credit ...
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